I’m stunned, unnerved, can’t speak my arms ache, empty, remembering
the last time I held the boy whose sudden death
not even twelve hours before brought me here, seated beside this man and his young son

I turn away, stare
out the port window
avoid his eyes, his question

if I inch my way across the wing stepdown to meet the clouds thick as the cotton batting
in the quilt my mother made when he was born would I free fall
through time and space
be with him once again
or be held by a thin lifeline of grief